in my veins
by cheaterinpink
Summary: she jolts up from her bed, heavy breaths wracking small girl in white flowing night gown until she's stronger harder meaner caroline. "so early?" "never going to be this good again, darlin'." a two-part songfic to 'in my veins' by andrew belle.
1. part 1

**In my veins  
><strong>**Part 1 of 2**

**a/n:** the song is 'in my veins' by andrew belle.  
>yeah, i know. did CHEATERINPINK fall off the face of the globe? die in a freak accident? die in a non-freak accident? die in a non-accident, period? haha, no.<br>i am, however, moving around the face of the globe. in little more than twenty-four hours, i shall be invading vancouver with a truckload of luggages and a single hairnet. goodbye asia, hello north america. so, forgive me for taking oh so long to update?

* * *

><p>"<strong>It's okay, you know, to love them both."<strong>

_She was there in the boarding house when Rose had said that._

_It was the same day Rose died. Maybe, in another universe, she would have thought it poetic – such a remarkable truth on such an eventful day. But it was a day of maudlinness and self-hatred, a day to do something she would forever regret._

_Ergo, it pricked at her skin like annoying little leeches. Every syllable, an ear-piercing scream._

_Why was she at the boarding house? If you asked her that, she'd shrug, refuse to look at you._

_Still, every time she's there, she stares at his door._

It's okay, you know, to love them both. _The words ring in her ears._

Yeah, well, what if this is the only time I won't be selfish? What if I only want one? And, what if, he doesn't want me back? What then, huh?

_(__And those were the lyrics to a song she knew too well, a song she hadn't heard in the longest time.)_

* * *

><p><em>Nothing goes as planned<br>__Everything will break_

She wants to tell him that she could have loved him, if he'd given her a chance.

"Hey Vampire Barbie," he drawls, sauntering past with a glass of bourbon in his hand. Classic Damon. "Where's Ken?"

She rolls her eyes and doesn't reply, moving (forcing) herself in the opposite direction.

And just like that – another chance lost.

* * *

><p><em>People say goodbye<br>__In their own special way_

She remembers a night ages ago, probably when she was seventeen (but, wait… she still is; seventeen _forever_, goddamnit), probably when she was drunk, maybe when she was dreaming, that is like this night.

"_Why are you being like this? __I'm so good to you and I'd do anything for you," the girl with the sun-burnt hair says._

_The guy with the hypnotizing ocean blue eyes clenches his jaw and looks away._

She's at the boarding house the third night this week and she can't remember ever being in this house so many times, even when she was with Damon. She can't sense anyone in the building but Stefan and Elena had told her to meet them there and so wait for them it appears she shall.

_He shrugs her off and walks away; she runs after him, high heels slapping the ground. Her hand reaches for his arm – he turns roughly, glaring at her._

"_You're stupid."_

She twiddles her fingers and looks surreptitiously left and right before swiftly getting up from the sofa and blurring to the liquor table. She thinks _Damon is _so_ going to kill me_ and then a second later _ah, who cares, I'm too parched_.

Her eyes roam over the many bottle tags until they land on the one she can't help smelling on him every time he's within a mile's radius.

Bourbon.

"_You're useless."_

Without hesitation, she snatches it up and peels the cork off

– _pop!_ –

and the rim's at her lips – she can smell the heady, all-powering scent of musk and vampire, almost taste his lips like they're really on hers –, she's tilting her head back, and _gawd_, it tastes so awful and so wonderful at the same time, it's leaving a burn down her throat, sparking a heat in her belly and suddenly –

"_You're shallow."_

– it's out of her hands. Eyes widening comically, she spins around and, standing in his dark (heartrendingly beautiful; if only her heart could still beat) glory, blue eyes penetrating hers, Damon has the bottle.

Surprised, scared and excited all at the same time, Caroline goes blank and stammers, "You have my bourbon."

"I believe you mean mine." He tosses it back, drinking liberally. She watches his mouth as he does so, silly high school girl giddy at the fact that his lips are now where hers were just seconds ago.

That's probably the closest they'll ever get to kissing anymore.

_His venomous __glare forces her to shrink back and she flinches. He spins around, disappearing into the crowd. Hours later, she'd lie in bed, curled up next to Matt (who is not nearly bad enough, not even close), and think _that's the best goodbye I'll ever get from him.

Damon smirks sarcastically at her, raising his bottle as if to toast, before ambling off, up the stairs.

Her eyes trail him to his room.

He could have thrown a punch at her, or stabbed her with a knife, and she'd be totally powerless, her new youth (in every sense of the word) nothing, absolutely nothing, in comparison to his many years on her. He could have –

But he didn't.

That's the best _welcome back_ she'll ever get. She twiddles her fingers, smile creeping on.

* * *

><p><em>All that you can rely on<br>__And all that you could fake  
><em>_Will leave you in the morning_

She used to think she was completely self-sufficient. Her mom would be gone the entire day ("I have a duty to this town," she remembers her mom saying, her voice drifting on a backward wind, foot already on the gas pedal, door flapping closed behind her, little girl in pink dress left standing in the empty hallway) and she'd have to make her own lunch (Chinese take-out most of the time, other times Vietnamese or pizza) and do her own laundry (she doesn't seem like the type, does she?) and clean up the house ("Where's the vacuum-cleaner?" she remembers her mom asking, police files still clutched in her hands, blood scenes and crimes still haunting the irises of her eyes; she thinks that shouldn't be a question a mom asks her daughter) and, and, and.

Then Damon came and started a fire she immediately became addicted to stoking, then Damon went and the fire burnt out, the dying embers reminding her of the what could have beens and the why nots and the unsaid I love yous.

In another lifetime, she'd be labeled an arsonist. In this, she's just a lovestruck, lovesick, fucking idiot.

She remembers the days after, her memories a jumble and missing, when she thought there was something seriously wrong with her; that was the first day in her entire life – and this, she can say with absolute confidence – that she actually seriously considered hiring a therapist. She couldn't even function. All the things she'd been so sure of – his love for her, despite his coldness and hardness, a marriage sometime down the road, kids and the white picket fence dream –, gone. Just like that. And, after a week of moping and drowning in thick, sticky sorrow, she realized _I should have seen it from the start_.

He stripped away her self-sufficiency, one of the few things she'd prided herself on. If she can't even rely on herself, if a guy she barely knew could erase parts of her she'd been so certain of, how can she rely on anyone else? What could she possibly have left?

It's getting to be too much.

* * *

><p><em>Come find you in the day<em>

**(And she becomes haunted by dreams that will never come true.)**

He's raining kisses on her skin, his hands traveling over every curve like the breath of a ghost.

_I want my prince charming._

She squirms where she lies, she squirms when she lies.

She's faltering under his gaze, hands roaming over his naked torso urgently, mind a hundred small towns and gentle fields away.

_I see you in my dreams, in my dreams even when I'm awake, awake, awwakkkkeeee –_

_This is too good to be true_, he thinks. Free meal on sexy legs. He's always liked the blonde, innocent-my-_ass_ types.

_This is too good to be true_, he whispers into her ear, his cool breath raising the tiny hairs on her skin. _So, enjoy it while it lasts._

_You're just a dream, just a dream, just a dream… __She reaches for him but he's moving away without even trying and there's that darned, infamous smirk reigning over his lips, _oh my gawd, just smile for real for once!_, and then she's falling and everything goes black and bright like a rainbow all at once._

She jolts up from her bed, heavy breaths wracking confident girl everyone forgets is only seventeen until she's sobbing child in bed, shaking, trying to hide, hide, hide.

_Oh my gawd, it was just a nightmare.__ He's not real. He's not going to kill me…_

_Kill me?_

Kill me.

_That is too good to be true, darlin'._

She jolts up from her bed, heavy breaths wracking small child in white flowing nightgown until she's stronger harder meaner caroline.

"So early?" she inquires, barely a trace of the pretty madness once scarring her face, her body, her everything lingering.

"Never going to be this good again," Damon says, laughing like it's a joke only he finds funny. He shrugs off his jacket as he saunters across the room towards her. She tries not to scramble back against the bed frame but fails.

_Oh, Damon_, she moans, toes curling uncontrollably as he bites down on her neck. _You're the one._

She squirms.

* * *

><p><em>Oh, you're in my veins<br>__And I cannot get you out_

She hates that the first time she wakes up in the hospital, she sees her ex.

"Damon," she growls, voice all raspy and hoarse.

"Oh, how I love it when you say my name," Damon murmurs from his place against the wall, chuckling a bit, "especially like _that_."

And, just like that, he's gotten under her skin. She curses. She thought she'd be stronger than that, harder than the girl she was two months ago.

"I come bearing gifts," Damon starts, walking forward. Caroline violently shakes her head, leaning back an inch for every step he takes.

"Don't flatter yourself," she croaks, wincing at him and clutching her stitches as she reaches for a glass of water.

Damon actually _smiles_. Like, a true, goddamned real smile. Not one of his stupid-assed half-smirks.

Figures that he'd only show that beautiful _(uh, no, um, ugly, menacing, tortured_) smile when she was in pain.

"You really took a hard bump to the head, didn't you?"

She rolls her eyes, scoffing and looking away.

Sometime that night, he gives her his blood and she sucks at his wrist with more enthusiasm than she would like. At the end though, when she should be feeling at the top of the world, broken bones mended and all that, it's him that walks away, smirking.

She hates that it wasn't even good enough for him to take her blood, to take her body; he had to go and force himself into her veins too.

She hates that she didn't have a choice, that she would have died without him (him, his blood; it's the same thing), but that he had a choice and could have taken her life away as easily as he restored it.

She hates that she feels even just a little grateful, even just a little desperate for his own branded elixir of life.

She hates it, hates it, **hates** it.

* * *

><p><em>Oh, you're all I taste<br>__At night, inside of my mouth_

The entire night is spent running her tongue along the crevices of her mouth, over the lips that his wrist rested at for minutes.

He's all she tastes, all she thinks about.

* * *

><p><em>Oh, you run away<br>_'_Cause I am not what you found_

"Why'd you leave me?"

"… I was looking for this girl I loved a long time ago. Still do." – _stab_ – "You were just a distraction… just something I could use and let bleed."

They talk in the darkness, so they can't see the other's face.

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Why'd you leave?" _Me_, he doesn't say. _Me_, she hears anyway.

She can't remember leaving him but she answers anyway. "You made me forget, remember?"

"So, you would have stayed. If I hadn't made you forget."

"No. I would have hitch-hiked to the next country."

They speak in the darkness, so they can hide their lies. She turns her frame towards him, reaching. He looks away.

"I wanted my Prince Charming. A place I didn't have to hide, where I could be safe."

In the darkness, nothing's real.

* * *

><p><strong>an:** i don't know when part 2 will be up. but, it will be up.  
>darn fanfiction. editing out words and not letting me keep them in.<p> 


	2. part 2

**In my veins  
><strong>**Part 2 of 2**

**a/n:** i just haven't been that inspired to write something of such length lately.

* * *

><p><em>Oh, you're in my veins<br>__And I cannot get you out_

* * *

><p>She imagines a scene one day. There are no shrill frills. Only thrills. It just pops into her head, compelling, and it just. won't. let. go. no. matter. what.<p>

They're sitting in her bedroom (and this is when she's still human). She's sitting by the window. He's lying on her bed. They're talking about this and that, nothing in particular and yet everything at once, and it's one of those rare, good days, the ones where she doesn't feel like he's about to suddenly jump up and tap a vein.

She turns to look at him and catches the most agonizing look of pain on his face and it stuns her for a moment. _Wasn't he talking about the most lighthearted things in the world just a second ago _and _what's with the face, it doesn't suit him_, _like, at _all and _what the heck, nothing makes sense._

The urge to make him feel better, to do anything to make a smile re-appear on his face, arrests her and she gets off the window sill and treads quietly towards him. He doesn't notice her movement till she's standing at the foot of her bed, her knees brushing his – only then does he look up and catch her wondering gaze. He pushes himself up, halfway to sitting, elbows on the bed.

"Darlin'?" Just for that moment, that single word, his face is open and pouring of rain, rain that's relentlessly splashing her face, soaking her cold. The wind howls and throws her hair into unparalleled disarray. She wants so badly to cry.

Wordlessly, she climbs up onto him, legs entangling with his, hips burrowing into his, her hands reaching without needing to be told for his; he stares at her silently.

"I want you… to…," she hesitates, a moment spent on insecurity, but then the image of him, maudlin, swells up and any anxiety is vanquished, "… to have my blood."

There's barely any change on his face, just the slight glint in his eye as he nods just the faintest bit. He doesn't ask if she's sure, because he knows if she wasn't, she wouldn't have offered herself up to him on a day he didn't want her _like that_.

Instead, he leans forward, stroking her cheek with uttermost tenderness, eyes capturing hers, lips dancing on hers. They stoke the fire that can't possibly burn out, not in their lifetime. The rain bullies and the hail storms and the waves roar up but the world could fall down and they'd still be wrapped up in each other, gone, too far gone.

And, in the moment she's least expecting the pain, he **bites**.

Has he ever drunk such intoxicating liquor, such fresh poison? Has she ever been so masochistic before?

She imagines a scene one day. There are no shrill frills. Only thrills. It just pops into her head, compelling, and it just. won't. let. go. no. matter. what.

It's a scene from another person's memory, or a scene from a future that will never be, or a scene from another lifetime.

Point is – it's just not possible that it's hers.

* * *

><p><em>Everything is dark<br>__It's more than you could take_

* * *

><p>For once, they're lying in bed together and not <em>doing it<em>. She thinks that's something quite extraordinary and it feels strangely nice. Cuddling is nice.

But she won't get used to it because this isn't the way things will be / are _ever_.

He sees her open her mouth in his peripheral vision and, instantly, a twinge of irritation springs up in his chest and _why would she go and ruin one of the nicer moments of their totally dysfunctional relationship when she didn't have to?_ and he's about to tell her to "please, shut up" but the words are already out of her mouth. It surprises him when they actually intrigue him.

It surprises him that he actually heard them.

"I know I'm not who you want me to be."

She says them with the expected amount of quietness and embarrassment any common tactful individual would say it with and, in perhaps the worst moment for it, she thinks of how her mother wouldn't even notice, doesn't understand, and it makes her angry, the kind of anger that comes with hot tears, and she has to smile a little because maybe she _wants_ to be angry, angry at anything. In a situation like this, how can she _not_ want to be? Her smile widens infinitesimally when she's able to continue talking calmly, talking demurely, even when all this hot boiling rage is cursing through her veins and would be burning up her soul if Damon hadn't already done that.

Would Damon be proud of her self-control? But questions like that don't get answered.

"I'm not her, whoever it is you're looking for."

He stares straight ahead into the middle distance, her words leading him to a more innocent past where happiness used to be a daily occurrence. Nowadays, happiness slips through his fingers like water. Like water in a desert.

The next line she didn't rehearse (but now, panicked, she wishes she did) comes out with more obvious hesitation and she has to dig her nails into her palm to shoot them out. Meek, bruised, they come out and the damage is done.

"And, I'm sorry but… I'm not sorry."

This makes Damon cock his head.

They lie in silence for more uncountable moments and when it gets too much, when it gets her heart racing (and Damon can hear every beat, like his own personal drum), she says something she regrets the moment her cursed tongue bleeds it.

"I take you as you are. So… please don't try and change me." It's half a question.

She squeezes her eyes shut, hoping he doesn't scream at her, or worse, insult her with that eerily soft voice that (and she doesn't know _how_ it does that but she hates it) sends shivers of the most _pleasant_ variety down her spine (they feel just like his callous palm coasting all over her skin, making her moan like a druggy, lighting a fire along the way) because it makes her forget that he's continually bringing her self-esteem down and _maybe it would be called 'verbal and emotional abuse', but not in this world, her world _and _oh, god, is he going to hit me?_

But when she's been waiting too long for something that still hasn't happened, she slowly withdraws her hands, letting herself have a peek. The spot beside her on the bed is empty and the lace curtains are floating idly, moved by a wind long gone, and _shit, he wasn't supposed to leave._

_Fudge_, this is worse than she ever thought it could be.

Caroline Forbes does not get bossed around. Caroline Forbes does what she wants, when she wants. She's not a girl to be messed with and she's the one always in control, never having to reach too far and too long for anything.

But, tonight, she spends thirty minutes (not really) dialing his phone and sobbing a little more whenever the operator picks up, and an hour and a half (not actually) holding the pillow he grabs all the time when he falls gracefully onto her bed, trying to sniff the traces of his cologne in the thread, and that's two hours (yeah, right) more than she usually misses him and that drowns her enough by itself.

She's cried herself to sleep.

That's when Damon returns and plants a kiss on her nose.

* * *

><p><em>Everything will change<br>__Nothing stays the same_

* * *

><p>She soon finds out that the harder she holds on to something, the harder it is to hold on.<p>

He leaves the next day.

* * *

><p><em>No, I cannot get you out<br>__No, I cannot get you out  
><em>_Oh no, I cannot get you out  
><em>_No, I cannot get you out_

* * *

><p><em>Skin on skin; fire on <em>_snow. He's dousing her flames, she's melting his hail. It's quite _something_ that neither has extinguished nor dissolved yet._

_He is nobody to her_, she thinks, remembering the way he tossed her about, the way he manipulated her with those silky words and even silkier actions, the way he talked down to her and froze her in sudden death.

_He is _**nobody**_ to her_, she prays.

She hasn't prayed in years.

Then she remembers the way he touched her, making her feel so alive, so wanted. She remembers the rose he plucked from the bush as they passed it, talking like young lovers into the night. She remembers him snaking it into her hair, the look in his eyes as he stared down at her (and she never saw that look again. Ever.), the feel of his fingers entwining with hers.

_No, no, no, no, no,_ she sobs, fists pressed against her eyes; she's a little tightly-wound coil in the corner of her room and she wishes her thoughts would stop, just stop.

_No, no, no, no more, please, no more, please, please…_

But it doesn't work that way.

She pleads _no_ and they come rushing back in, like a tornado revisiting a place it's already flung to pieces, destroyed. The time he sent Tyler into a total state of unconsciousness when he tried to feel her up ("she's _mine_," he'd said, and her heart had never beat with such passion before), the time he thought she was sleeping when she really wasn't and stroked her cheek like she could break, the time he just lay next to her instead of jumping into sex, the time when he, the time when, the time. The time he.

The memories play like a black-and-white movie strip, running on the underside of her eyelids when they're closed, casting shadows from the wall when they're open. She can't run from them. And she's sobbing by the end of it, big wracking sobs that tear through her chest and make her wish she was dead.

He's the world to her. He's **everyone**, everything to her.

* * *

><p><em>All that you rely on<br>__And all that you can save  
><em>_Will leave you in the morning_

* * *

><p>"I don't know what we should do, Stefan! He's clearly depressed! You should have seen him. Damon was actually crying –"<p>

Stefan presses his hand quickly to Elena's mouth as Caroline trots in, lip slightly quivering.

"Have you heard from him?" she asks weakly.

Uncomfortably, Stefan shakes his head. Elena reaches over, gathering her in a tight hug.

She finishes her friend's sentence. _And he _never_ cries._

* * *

><p><em>Oh, you're in my veins<br>__And I cannot get you out_

* * *

><p>When a person has changed your history to such a degree, is it even possible to contemplate meeting someone else who could erase him out of it?<p>

* * *

><p><em>No, I cannot get you out<br>__No, I cannot get you out  
><em>_Oh no, I cannot get you out_

* * *

><p><em>And that is the end of their epic love story. It might seem abrupt, and it <em>_would be, looking at it like it was just a story in a book. But it wasn't, not for Caroline. The pain lasted for years afterwards. Not all fairytale stories have their happy endings._

"Hey," Michael greets, standing at the doorway, looking all dashing and sweet. His eyes appraise her as she walks down the stairs, elegant in a midnight blue (that's the colour of _his_ eyes). He wants to rip it right off her once they're alone, she knows. "You look… beautiful."

"Thanks."

"Just try to have a good time," Elena whispers as she fixes a minor flaw in Caroline's appearance, gently tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Caroline musters up a smile.

His eyes just aren't blue enough…

Michael escorts her down the pathway and her mom and Elena wave from the porch, happy smiles plastered on face. Michael's hand feels fat and sweaty and heavy on her waist, and she has to keep herself in check lest she accidentally upchucks on his shining new shoes.

"How about we skip the dance and head straight to the hotel?" he whispers in her ears, big, sweaty paw already slipping up her gown. She cringes.

_Caw caw._

She looks up and she thinks she may have just seen a crow fly off from a tree. Her heart skips a beat (well, theoretically). Michael brings her around the car.

"Or we could just drive 'round the corner and do it in the backseat," he suggests. She hates that he thinks he's so suave and sexy. _He_ knew how to carry himself. His hot breath slams against her, evading the cold night's breeze.

"Yeah, I don't think so."

Their heads whip up. She can hardly believe it. Is it really…?

He steps out from the dark.

"Damon?"

He smirks.

**- Fin.**


End file.
